


Battle Lines

by petrichoral



Category: The Epic of Gilgamesh
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 16:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petrichoral/pseuds/petrichoral
Summary: Gilgamesh, legendary space general and ruler of Uruk Prime, has an unexpected encounter with a pirate.





	Battle Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neutrophilic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neutrophilic/gifts).



Gilgamesh, the greatest king of his century, the unrivalled ruler of civilised space, kept a court of golden splendour on the central planet of Uruk Prime. It had shimmering towers, rare flora and fauna secured from the Wilderness Belt, the most astute politicians, the greatest artists, the flower of the sector’s youth casting demure looks from behind ornamental fans. He had not been back there in four years.

“It took me,” said one of his advisers - Gilgamesh didn’t remember her, but she seemed more than usually persistent - “ _three months_ to get here, your Majesty. This place is too far out for any transports; I had to take a freighter. A livestock freighter. We were nearly shot down by out-system pirates. A goat took liberties with my shoes.”

Gilgamesh raised his eyes from the three-dimensional array of battle plans around him, crossed his ankles lazily and regarded her. He hadn’t bothered to lay on civilian transport to get to the Wilderness Belt, and he rather enjoyed the thought of his stodgiest politicians in the company of nervous goats. Not that any of the more conservative ones would brave the trip. That had been the point: start a pure, clean campaign to clear out the nests of pirate scum, and incidentally get away from the stultifying boredom of court. “Am I hearing criticism of my campaign?”

“Your Majesty is a divinely-blessed preeminent strategist who makes no mistakes,” the adviser said, in a hard, scratched-nail voice which conveyed the exact opposite. “Your Majesty’s royal forces also seem to be over-extended.”

Gilgamesh blinked, and this time gave her an astonished look. She was a tiny, scrawny woman, but now he looked closer, he could see the bronze glint of a knife brooch - a high priestess of Ishtar’s cult. She must be one of his religious advisers. “Is Ishtar the God of War now, priestess?” Irritation started to prickle at him, part of the forced inaction of a ship environment. “If so, her Divine Grace might be aware I have not lost a battle in a year.”

“No,” the priestess said. “But your forces have run into the Wilderness Belt like the proverbial gazelle, far past your communications and logistics links. You have conquered all the human-habitable bases and are now fighting pirates over worthless rocks. Uruk Prime cannot even speak to you without a two day delay. The campaign made sense up until a few months ago. What is troubling you?”

Gilgamesh half-rose from his chair. “You will hold your tongue, priestess!”

She stared up at him. Gilgamesh was genetically blessed and had the normal enhancements, so his towering golden-haired form tended to intimidate lesser people, but here he wasn’t getting any visible reaction. Gilgamesh growled under his breath and strode over the tiled floor of the command chamber to the ship’s viewing windows, nearly upsetting his _sidru_ set. It was lying stuck in the middle of a game against himself; he irritably shoved it out of his way. The thing that gnawed at his insides - the soul-sucking boredom, the _void_ \- rose up like bile. Usually the day-to-day stimuli of command beat it down, but this damned priestess with her damned insolent stare was asking the wrong questions.

“I thought I’d found some sort of opponent,” Gilgamesh said at last. He stared into the dull blackness of the viewing window, broken up by distant star-clouds.

The priestess was suddenly, annoyingly silent.

Gilgamesh drummed his fingers on the warm, faintly vibrating surface of the port. He felt a damaging urge to unload what was on his mind. Ishtar's cult were normally discreet. “It started a couple of years ago, when I was only just making incursions on the Eighth Quadrant cluster. Everywhere I sent attack ships, there were barbarian drones to counter them. _Expecting_ them. Some of them were fucking farming transports, but they were always just in the place they would do most damage.”

“A military threat?” the priestess said.

“Not to me,” Gilgamesh said, nettled.

“Then what is this trouble?”

Gilgamesh growled. “This time last year I was working out attack plans for five layers of probability determinations for everything down to the smallest supply run, because if I _didn’t_ , out of nowhere there’d be scrappers taking out my fuel ships.” Having someone to test himself against, a whetstone to sharpen his blade - it had lit up his daily routine in a way that made him realise his surroundings had turned grey years ago. Nobody was a match for Gilgamesh of Uruk - except those few months, when someone had been. _I dreamed of him, the commander_ , he nearly said, but that would be admitting too much weakness. He turned back to Ishtar’s priestess and said, “Then, a few months ago, whoever it was disappeared. Perhaps I killed him. Everything,” he added, “is now much easier.”

“So you are--”

“ _Bored_ ,” Gilgamesh growled.

She eyed him as if she’d intended to finish the sentence a different way. Gilgamesh glowered at her and considered whether the balance of powers would let him to space advisers.

“Hm,” she said. “With your Majesty’s permission, I need to send a message to someone in my order.”

 

*

 

Three weeks later, the irritating priestess had left, the royal fleet had conquered another resource-poor asteroid field just because it that or go home, and Gilgamesh had forgotten about the incident. He was just about ready to climb the walls of his flagship, but that was nothing new; he had been like that for months now. Originally that feeling had sent him out from the gilded palace to the Wilderness Belt in the first place, but now there was nowhere left to go.

“Your Majesty,” said his adjutant, one evening when Gilgamesh had finished his command meetings. “A petitioner.”

“A petitioner?” Gilgamesh said blankly. He’d thought he’d left the petitioners behind in Uruk. Not even the most determined of them had managed to get to him once the fleet had driven out past the commercial trade routes.

“Yes, your Majesty,” the adjutant said, sounding disapproving. “He shouldn’t have been let through the security cordon, but he had a passage-token from the Order of Ishtar.”

Ishtar again. Gilgamesh frowned. But he’d learned the only way to keep up with the bulk of petitions was to give them results quickly and decisively, and whoever had managed to make their way out here must have something important on their mind. “Send him in.”

“Your Majesty,” the adjutant said, “may I suggest a guard?”

“What for?” Gilgamesh said. “This entire fleet is a secure area.”

“We took five energy weapons off him at the airlock,” the adjutant said. “He’s--” She hesitated. “We’re not sure of his background. He may be… uncivilised.”

_Uncivilised_ meant someone outside the rule of Uruk Prime, one of the colonists, miners or pirates who inhabited the Wilderness Belt. That shouldn’t be possible, because you needed certifications to travel through Uruk space. But then, this man had somehow got his hands on an Ishtar passage-token, so he had connections. Gilgamesh’s interest was piqued. “Send him in,” he said. He could see the worried young adjutant open her mouth again, and he gave her a flat look. “Do you really think an unarmed barbarian can take me?”

She swallowed and started backwards. “No, Sire!”

Gilgamesh stretched out on the command chair that served as a temporary throne. He’d dealt with barbarians before, both naturalised and not, and they were easily impressed. Most of them had never seen gold before, because it was barely traded outside Uruk, let alone a ship that used it as decoration.

The man who entered didn’t look like a barbarian.

Gilgamesh was used to being the most intimidating presence in the room. He used his stature to its full advantage: he made his appearances in a traditional soldier’s jerkin that displayed his sheer bulk, with his hair bound back under the golden band Uruk used to confer kingship. Warfare was no longer about a strong arm and a keen eye, but something in humans’ animal brains still thought it was, and Gilgamesh took full advantage of that.

Now Gilgamesh’s animal brain looked at the man in the doorway, and went very still and intent.

He was massive, filling out his traveller’s tunic until the cloth around the shoulders stretched. More than that, he stood with his feet planted on the floor like a mountainside meeting the ground and his presence filled the room. He was a couple of inches shorter than Gilgamesh, though it took Gilgamesh a second to notice. He had trimmed hair and a short beard, untidy from travel. His skin wasn't smooth and well-maintained skin as was normal in the Uruk court, and his face had creases and tiny imperfections. Gilgamesh’s gaze tracked every one of them before he got to the barbarian’s eyes, which were dark and amused, and looking straight back at him.

Gilgamesh gave him the level look that forced most people to avert their gaze. The barbarian only looked more amused. Beneath the amusement, though, there was something - something _eager_ about him, like a boulder stilled on the edge of a cliff. It seemed to be part of his fabric.

“I am Gilgamesh of Uruk,” Gilgamesh said.

“Enkidu,” the man said. His gaze flickered around the room, taking in the gilded carvings and the cedar panels. “Of… a few places. Nowhere in particular.”

“It’s customary to bow,” Gilgamesh said.

“Is it?” Enkidu said, with that same odd, low-key amusement. “What happens if I don’t?”

“If we were in court, you’d get skewered by an energy bolt,” Gilgamesh said blandly. “In this special private setting, you get to wrestle the King of Uruk himself. In other words, I beat you into the ground.”

“Do you,” Enkidu said. There was a new glint in his eye.

Gilgamesh could beat everyone at the games of strength the Uruk court enjoyed, but looking at this man, a couple of inches shorter, he had a sudden moment of doubt. And at the same time, something else that he hadn’t felt in a long while: a hot, uncontrolled curl of desire.

Gilgamesh was familiar with wanting someone. He’d had his share of passionate love affairs around the time he’d come into his majority - for someone divinely blessed and incidentally ruler of the sector, it was never hard to find willing partners. It had become so easy that the whole chase had lost its lustre. He was used to wanting smooth-skinned young men and women, scented with roses, who blushed readily and tumbled easily. This was precisely the wrong person to want.

“What is your petition?”

“I don’t know, yet,” the barbarian Enkidu said. He still hadn’t moved from the doorway

Gilgamesh leaned back in his chair, stretching out his legs and purposely reclaiming some space. “It’s also customary for a _petitioner_ to come with a _petition._ I suggest you think of what you want some time in the next two seconds, or turn yourself in to the sergeant on duty for wasting royal time.”

Enkidu took one heavy step forward into the room. Gilgamesh’s hind-brain jolted his nerves with electricity. _Fight or flight_ , it tried, but neither of those seemed to fit. “The thing is,” Enkidu said, “I’m not sure if you’re the person I’m looking for.”

“I’m not usually mistaken for anyone else,” Gilgamesh said, propping his chin on one arm with deliberate slowness. “What are your deciding factors?”

“Fighting you might help,” Enkidu said.

Gilgamesh’s thoughts about silken sheets and oiled skin vanished, and his eyes narrowed. He hadn’t survived to rule all of Uruk space without some instinct for danger, and while the guards could scan for energy weapons, there were many places someone could conceal a dagger. “Nice try,” he said. He didn’t add _Naked, maybe,_ because he’d been distracted enough already.

This whole thing had gone far enough, in fact. Gilgamesh should have ordered the barbarian to leave. Therefore it was a mystery to him why he turned to his disused game set, and said, “What about _sidru_?”

“ _Sidru?”_

Barbarians. Gilgamesh gestured the set over and it came gliding to his feet and settled itself, like an obedient dog, between two cushions. It was shaped like a spire, a polished wooden base with gold wire climbing straight up from it like foliage, weaving back on itself and causing impossible distortions. _Sidru_ game sets were not easy to look at if you weren’t good at the game. “Do you know it?”

“Yeah,” Enkidu said. “I know this kind of game.” He smiled, suddenly, in a way that for an instance made him look less like half a mountain and more like a wolf.

Gilgamesh sat cross-legged on the cushion facing the door. “Then play me.” His set was a masterpiece of carved wood and filigree, the gossamer-fine sensory extenders concealed behind a wooden panel on either side of the board. Gilgamesh connected them to his wrists, where they settled around them like cobweb bracelets. “How much of a handicap?”

“Depends how good you are, doesn’t it,” Enkidu said. “Five ships? Three?”

“People call me a generous monarch,” Gilgamesh said, watching to see Enkidu’s reaction. Something about him felt… somehow familiar. It wasn’t his face, or his voice, or anything he said. It was something in the way he moved. Gilgamesh looked down at the game set to set the ship projections to their starting positions. “I’ll give you five.”

“Sorry,” Enkidu said. “Give _me_?”

Gilgamesh’s head snapped up. Enkidu’s non-symmetric face had creased at the corners of his eyes, and he was smiling again. Gilgamesh felt rage rise, rage which made every colour in the room more vivid, and realised he’d been played already.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Enkidu said. “The glorious king doesn’t take a handicap.” He bent his head and seemed entirely focused on carefully wrapped the sensory extenders around his wrist. “Let’s play.”

Gilgamesh closed his eyes, arranged his hands on his lap, and sank into the game.

Three-dimensional space stretched in front of him and around him. He could feel the ships like parts of his body - faintly, though, as this wasn’t a real battle engine, only a game. They never felt as detailed as real ships. He arranged them in clusters, cascading a starting manoeuvre with only part of his mind. The real challenge in _sidru_ , as in battle, came when you started to feel your opponent move.

Gilgamesh felt his body breathe out. All other concerns dropped away. In _sidru_ there was only you, and the space, and the other mind. This was war, and in war Gilgamesh was unbeatable.

He started to feel Enkidu sooner than he expected. A quick, elusive flurry of movement from an auxiliary squadron, like the silver flash of a fish’s tail. They weren’t a strong cluster of ships, or even particularly well-specced. Gilgamesh paid them only fleeting attention.

He waited, slowly manoeuvring into longer-term positions. That had been a novice mistake, clearly an invitation to start with some small skirmishes. Gilgamesh would give Enkidu nothing there; he would wait for his nerve to break. He waited.

And waited. There was only so much preparation work that could be done. Enkidu was a blank wall, no manoeuvring in sensory range. A slow, dull start; Gilgamesh was almost disappointed. No point in wasting further time, though. The moment Gilgamesh's final cluster reached its position, he set a classic kill chain into motion.

And walked into a wall of flame.

Enkidu's ships were everywhere. He must have had taken the penalties for cloaking his entire fleet, which should have crippled his movement speed. And it _had_. That would have mattered if Enkidu hadn’t predicted Gilgamesh’s exact kill chain, and placed ships at every turn Gilgamesh would make.

Gilgamesh had no time to react. Enkidu pounded into his fleet with shattering blow after shattering blow, and Gilgamesh's head rang from the currents caused by every clash. But he could give as good as he got. He forced his mind clear, sacrificed his outer ships and pivoted, lightning-fast, to his second plan. He massed his ships to one side of the field, brute-forcing his way to a weak point that Enkidu couldn’t defend with his cloaking penalty. Enkidu tried to defend, but had to temporarily yield. Gilgamesh took several ships before Enkidu regrouped, slowing again to a snail’s pace as he disappeared out of range.

Gilgamesh wasn’t fooled this time. He gathered every combat-capable ship he could and plunged after him, burning up his own scouts in pursuit. And he proved right, because he broke into Enkidu’s space right in the middle of another of those counter-kill chains, only Enkidu hadn’t had time to set this one up, and Gilgamesh plunged with vicious glee into the dirtiest melee he had ever had in _sidru_. There was no room to consider, there was no room to aim: there was only ship-on-ship in the closest of quarters, and it was destroy or lose. And Enkidu, fast as the wind, fast as light, had no more intention to lose than Gilgamesh.

A suspicion stirred in Gilgamesh’s mind, but it had no time to take root. The set coursed electricity through his veins, pain and adrenaline both, and he fought with everything he had.

And then a breakthrough. Enkidu had a habit of focusing on the heavy hitters in his clusters, paying a little more attention to their positioning. He failed to see his light-armoured backup had wheeled a little too far from the main fleet, a little too close to Gilgamesh’s cutters. Gilgamesh ghosted some scouts around Enkidu’s heavy hitters, teasing them in certain directions, and then thrust.

Enkidu’s fleet shattered apart. Gilgamesh plunged deep into his territory, revelling in every sensory feedback spike as he took down ship after ship. He could feel Enkidu shaking around him, tracking his every movement, focused on Gilgamesh with every atom of his presence.

But it was all too short. Gilgamesh had forgotten the silver flash of ships at the start, had forgotten that he hadn’t seen that cluster since the beginning. He only remembered he had left his central comm unit largely unprotected when those few, light-armoured ships descended out of nowhere and knocked out his comms.

It wasn’t a disaster. As Gilgamesh frantically scrambled, plans and back-up plans unrolled in his head, adapting themselves to every action and reaction. In any other game, he could have regrouped. Against anyone else one of those plans would have worked. But he could feel Enkidu’s mind as close to him as his own skin, could feel him countering every movement Gilgamesh even thought of making, and he knew he’d lost. Gilgamesh froze, his mind for an instance blanking, filling with the gold and black of the game void, as he waited for the final, killing thrust.

Enkidu’s ships veered off into a classic defensive formation. The killing thrust never came.

Gilgamesh’s brain shorted out. Then he tore out his sensory enhancements, heaving for breath, and said, “You goat-balled reed-skulled _motherfucker_.”

The lights flooded back in on both of them as they fell out of game space. Enkidu was blinking, playing the stupid barbarian. The game set flashed up Gilgamesh’s winning score.

"You won," Enkidu said, his voice uneven.

Gilgamesh struggled to control his breathing. You didn't play the ships in _sidru_ , you played your opponent's mind, and Gilgamesh had never been played like that. Enkidu had been playing something larger than the game. Gilgamesh wanted to lay hands on him and flatten him.

“This is a good set,” Enkidu said, bending his head to inspect it. “Fancy sensors.” He seemed to be moving very carefully, as if acutely aware of his body. He looked up at Gilgamesh’s rage and said, “Was something not to your liking?”

“You did that,” Gilgamesh said, spacing his words very carefully. “You did that because it would drive me up the fucking wall. And you knew that. It was _you._ ” He had risen to his feet, and Enkidu came as well, solid as a tectonic plate.

“It was me what?” Enkidu said. “I’m just a miner.”

“Miner my ass,” Gilgamesh said. “You’re a fucking pirate, and I’ve been fighting you for months.”

Enkidu rewarded him with a flash of that wolf-smile. “Just a miner, your Majesty. Sorry you didn’t enjoy the game. What do you want me to do about it?” He started to stretch, as if he’d just finished a pleasant evening at a friend’s house and was about to say his goodbyes.

Gilgamesh shot out his hand and seized Enkidu’s arm. It was rock-hard beneath his grip. “I believe, _friend_ , that we’ll have a rematch.”

“Used to getting your way, aren’t you?” Enkidu said. “Don’t really fancy another game. Might get a headache.” He brought his arms down, the muscles flexing under Gilgamesh’s grip, but he made no attempt to throw him off. “What match were you thinking of?”

“I believe I said something about wrestling,” Gilgamesh said. He could feel how Enkidu would move. He could feel the shape of him, and how his muscles reacted to touch, and how he would resist when pushed. This man - this complete stranger - this mind he’d been matched with for months upon end. “Stay.”

“Yeah,” Enkidu said slowly, his dark eyes fixed entirely on Gilgamesh. “You know, a good wrestling match can take a while. Days, could be.”

“Have you got somewhere to be?”

“It might happen that I don’t,” Enkidu said, and the creases at the corners of his eyes deepened. “Might stay a while. Your Majesty.”

Gilgamesh answered Enkidu’s sly grin with one pulled from the deepest, most savage and joyful part of him. The colours were brighter. He was luminous, like the boiling fury of the sun, and at that moment he knew that Enkidu would be his, was his already, and that he and his were immortal.


End file.
